Gun Control & RKBA
In reply to the discussion: Pistol grips on long guns, and rifle crime in general. [View all]ellisonz
(27,711 posts)(You're getting no further comments after these on this topic)
1. The assault weapons ban restricted sales from 1994-2005. Now that sales are booming, it's only logical that in time those guns will find their way into criminal hands, and then be put to criminal use. I also question using the rifle categorization as an assessor since it includes things like hunting rifles we aren't concerned about. Have you seriously asked yourself the simple question of what will happen to all these guns in time? Will they really become collectibles or will they just be going to a secondary market after all these people grow tired of their toys? To make a fun comparison, have you ever heard of the Great North Pacific Garbage Gyre? It is a massive field of floating, decaying plastic the size of Texas in the Pacific Ocean; plastic is now finding its way into the fish population. Did plastic manufacturers anticipate this side effect? Probably not, they didn't care to think what the long term effect of our plastic-waste culture was going to be and this is the result. Similarly, I don't think assault weapons owners are thinking in the long-term about what effect they are going to have to society. They're just trying to read tea-leaves to make a narrow argument with very shaky logical justification, a contorted view of liberty as an individual question rather than as a social question.
http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/08/fish-ingesting-plastic-waste-study-finds/
2. When rifles were the preferred weapon of choice we had conceived of the blender or much less the Internet. Furthermore, the logical extension of the arguments made by those who think we should be allowed to carry arms wherever, whenever, we want is to de-emphasize the ability to conceal and to re-emphasize firepower. I'll call this the Wild West scenario where a society has gone from a stage where it doesn't have to address the problem of the public carrying arms to the point where you have to check your gun in with the Sheriff in Tombstone. Where does this "madness" (Bill Clinton's words, not mine) end if we are to have whatever gun rights we believe we ought to have irrespective of any possible social consequence?
3. You've already acknowledged: "I think it was other social factors at work," but still claim that connecting gun ownership with the violent crime rate provides an acceptable sociological analysis for the purpose of what gun control is necessary to "establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty." If it doesn't meet that standard, all of them, a policy such as "gun control full of loopholes" is not in the broad public interest. You want these items, you have no real need for them; they do not secure the Blessings of Liberty in any real way unless you want to engage in the Red Dawn fantasy or nostalgia for the Confederacy. You have no right under any circumstance to have a need to overthrow the government in the Constitution; such arguments are anti-Federalist sophistry and mystification and this Democrat doesn't buy it for one minute.
4. I think the pro-gun lobby needs to ask itself how legal possession of guns becomes illegal possession of guns; for some reason (understandable), the pro-gun lobby doesn't want to engage this question in any meaningful way. This of course is understandable considering it makes for a great case for the true meaning of the Constitution, that the Second Amendment exists to create "a well regulated Militia" that can be called up to put down domestic insurrection or foreign invasion; rather than carte blanche gun rights.
5. I've already said I want a better written law so the gun manufacturers can't slither around the intent of the law. I think it's simple: weapon production must be approved by the government as being in accordance with State law, which of course can be coerced by Federal standard (see drunk driving laws). I don't care about the gun porn; that weapon has no purpose in independent hands, not connected with service in the Militia, other than to be, what I humorously call a "death spewer."
6. Killing other human beings; it has no legitimate sporting or self-defense purpose on its own merit. I'll quote FDR on this issue:
Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1931, opposing the Hanley-Fake firearms bill which would have increased access to handguns. Quoted in Gun Violence in America:The Struggle for Control, Alexander DeConde, 2003 (p.132).
7. This is where your argument falls entirely into anti-Federalist sophistry and mystification about various fantastical scenarios in which a suspect armed with these weapons is not a mortal threat to a law enforcement officer, operating under Constitutional protection, to reasonably undertake his job in upholding the law. I think here it's worthwhile to quote the former Governor of Vermont and Chairman of the Democratic Party on the expiration of the assault weapons ban:
September 13, 2004
On Monday, Sept.13, the law banning the manufacture of semiautomatic assault weapons for private sale in the United States expired.
Before you read further I should tell you that my father was an avid hunter. I grew up with guns in the house, and although I do not hunt, I own an over-and-under shotgun. While running for office in Vermont, I won eight straight elections with the endorsement of the National Rifle Association. As Governor, I conserved hundreds of thousands of acres of habitat by partnering with the NRA to fight off the right-wing property rights advocates who opposed government land acquisition. I believed Vermont's outdoors should be the way it has been for generations, and now it will be.
However, I have never met a hunter who thought owning an assault weapon was necessary to shoot a deer or a bear. I have met a lot of law enforcement officers who think that the federal assault weapons ban saved a lot of their colleagues lives. I have met parents whose kids were killed by assault weapons years ago and are bracing for more of the same.
http://www.crocuta.net/Dean/Dean_Cagle_Editorial_Assault_Wpns_Sept13_2004.htm
Here's the crux of the matter: we're not talking about rifles; we're talking about assault weapons. I would never deny your right to ownership of weapons for hunting, self-defense, and sport. But when your choice of weapons present a clear and present danger to the safety of the public and their officials, despite the best efforts of law enforcement, I believe you have exceeded any Constitutional mandate to not have your rights "infringed." I will finally quote the former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States Warren Burger (someone you'd expect to think otherwise):
---------
In 1992, Warren E. Burger, a former chief justice of the United States appointed by President Richard M. Nixon, expressed the prevailing view.
The Second Amendment doesnt guarantee the right to have firearms at all, Mr. Burger said in a speech. In a 1991 interview, Mr. Burger called the individual rights view one of the greatest pieces of fraud I repeat the word fraud on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/06/us/06firearms.html?pagewanted=all
(Again, you're not getting any further response, because very clearly you are more interested in having a fantastical debate than any substantive exchange - it's really obvious in your final three paragraphs that you don't wish to consider this in real life terms, but rather on your terms. Enjoy. )